Exiled: the parents who dared to teach at home [timesonline.co.uk]

Last Updated: Wednesday, 24 March 2010 10:14

It was just after 7am in a chilly October day in 2006 when the police came knocking. Uwe and Hannalore Romeike and their three children remained quiet, scarcely daring to breath and hoping the cops would leave if they got no answer. But the officers were determined and threatened to break down the door. Reluctantly Uwe, a piano teacher, opened the door of his home in Bissingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Shortly afterwards, the police drove away with three of their four children.

The Romeikes’ crime? Educating their children at home in a country where such activity is not only illegal, but regarded as highly suspect and even antisocial. A German court recently suggested that home schooling fosters the creation of “parallel societies”. And the police were called in to take the Romeike children to school.